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Aging

"The aging of the U.S. population is one of the major public health challenges of the 21st century. With more than 70 million baby boomers in the United States poised to join the ranks of those aged 65 or older, preventing disease and injury is one of the few tools available to reduce the expected growth of healthcare and long-term care costs.”

Julie Louise Gerberding, MD, Director, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Pointing to the pile at the back door, Steve Levy smiles and says, “My boots are still drying out from the ski trip.” He just returned from two days on Washington’s Mount Adams, which involved parking at 4,600 feet, hiking to 7,200 feet carrying a full pack, a tent, camping gear, and skis, and setting up camp for the night. The next morning Levy and his friends hiked to the 12,200-foot summit of Mount Adams, then skied down to their car. “We skied 7,000 feet,” Levy reports. “I don’t know anywhere you can ski 7,000 feet.”

Roger had never thought about his age in relation to his position during his eight years at the company. Everything was fine until a wave of new hirings and promotions came through his division. He noticed for the first time that he was beginning to be the senior member of the organization, not only in his length of time at the company, but also in his age. This was unsettling. Roger noticed there was a certain youthful enthusiasm in the new hires, and suddenly it occurred to him that he had gradually lost that quality over the past eight years.

Bodyworker, aromatherapist, and yoga instructor Yamuna Zake thinks so. In fact, she suggests we can prevent many of the unwelcome characteristics often associated with aging, such as rigidity and structural problems, simply by being more on the ball — literally.

Chronic stress ages the body and can make cells appear up to 17 years older than they really are, according to a recent study reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. While researchers and healthcare practitioners have long thought as much, this study reveals exactly how stress takes its biological toll on the body.

Elderly chorale members have significantly fewer falls, doctor visits, and take less medication than their peers who are not participating in any arts programs, according to an ongoing three-year study conducted by researchers at The George Washington University’s Center on Aging, Health, and Humanities. Furthermore, subjects answering their inner artist reported lower levels of depression, less loneliness, and higher morale, in addition to better health one year after joining.

Who would have thought that living the suburban life might be killing you? According to a study published in Public Health, suburban sprawl (specifically the air pollution caused by automobiles and a more sedentary lifestyle) may be more hazardous to your health than metropolitan living. The study compared such dichotomous areas of the United States as Riverside-San Bernadino, Calif., with Manhattan and found that living in the least-sprawled areas added as much as four years to your life.

If you’ve strained one of your fibularis tendons, the pain in your ankle will let you know something is wrong, but you’ll probably have a hard time identifying the fibularis as a source of the trouble.

Technology has certainly put us in touch with important information on preventive measures for spreading the COVID-19 virus, such as washing our hands and avoiding contact with those who are sick. However, much of the information is ignoring an essential part to staying healthy—boosting our immune system!

Almost every massage therapist has encountered a client with chronically tense muscles that are so stiff it takes great effort to massage them. Others quietly suffer from muscle aches that affect both their work and leisure time, making them miserable. Some people don’t even know they are tense, while others are aware but have no idea why. There are dozens of less-common medical conditions that can cause stiff muscles, such as Lyme’s disease or lupus, but the following 5 reasons are among the most common.

Massage therapy has powerful healing properties. There is simply nothing that compares to the warmth and precision of real human touch. But modern life has become so tense and stressful that an increasing number of clients are suffering from chronic tension: painful muscle spasms and conditions like fibromyalgia, where they feel a diffuse discomfort almost every day.

Adults are now sitting around more than at any other time in history. And there can be rather serious consequences. Some authors have gone so far as to describe chronic, prolonged sitting as “the new smoking,” a deadly habit.